Photo: WTCC Media

Rob Huff looks ahead to greater 2015 after another Macau victory

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Lada Sport’s Rob Huff took another victory at the Guia Race of Macau, extending the four-wheeled record to seven in the final WTCC race at the circuit, and is now looking forward to campaigning the new ORECA-developed Lada Vesta in next year’s championship

Huff started from third on the grid and was up to second by Lisboa, capitalising on a mistake made by Hugo Valente in the Campos Racing Chevrolet Cruze. The 34-year-old Briton then took the lead on lap ten as Tiago Monteiro slowed down while leading in the Honda Civic with a power steering issue, but Huff had to defend hard to keep Citroën’s Yvan Muller at bay for his second win of the season, and moves up to tenth in the championship standings.

“I’m very happy. We’ve got seven wins here, but I’m not sure quite how that happened, I’m not sure I can believe it to be honest,” said Huff to TouringCarTimes. “We’ve won with a Lada around Macau, and got the lap record ahead off of (José María) López, which is absolutely incredible. It’s a testament to what the boys have done. It proves Beijing wasn’t a fluke, it proves Argentina wasn’t a fluke, we genuinely won race two.

“I feel very bad for Tiago (Monteiro) obviously, he’s always been quick around here as well, but unfortunately that’s racing and ultimately we’ve won fair and square.”

The Lada team will dispose of the Grantas, which will not be raced next year, with Huff being allowed to keep the two-time race winning car, with the team moving on to race the new Vesta, which replaces the Priora in Lada’s road-going range next year. The new Lada is being developed in conjunction with motorsport powerhouse ORECA, which took Yvan Muller to the 2008 championship title with SEAT.

“If we can win in this, we can win in anything,” said Huff. “Next year we’ve got a brand new car. I expect the pattern will be similar in that we’ll probably not be the quickest out of the box, but I’d like to think that by the end of the year we’d be able to genuinely fight for pole and go for wins in race one, and then for 2016 we can have a crack at the championship.

Remarking on Citroën’s success in the championship, Huff added:
“Citroën have taken everything to the next level, and I think everyone’s quite surprised, including themselves probably, in what they’ve achieved and how quickly they’ve achieved it.”